De Underjordiske
by KatrinaLebowitz
Summary: Panic was an inevitable reality of Toki's daily life, nothing in that respect had changed since his exodus from his small hometown. He awoke cold and hungry, fighting cold sweats, his heart beating out of his chest and an overall sense of dread encompassing his whole being daily. But at least he was free.


Panic was an inevitable reality of Toki's daily life, nothing in that respect had changed since his exodus from his small hometown. He awoke cold and hungry, fighting cold sweats, his heart beating out of his chest and an overall sense of dread encompassing his whole being daily.

The difference now being; he was free.

Instead of waking up in the punishment hole, or in his small closet of a bedroom back at his parent's hovel, he awoke to a brand new world.

When Toki could, he would snuggle against closed doors to restaurants or bars, the stoops provided some shelter and cover from the snow, the especially older buildings weren't as well insulated and blessed heat would sometimes waif through the cracks in the door. That was especially rare though.

Toki knew once the early morning light bled across the sky he would be kicked off the stoop by the shop owner, then he would slink off to a park bench, half awake and shivering.

Most of the time he slept in Oslo's beautiful parks. They were indeed beautiful, but they didn't offer much in the way of comfort. At least they weren't dark and foreboding like the forests near his parent's home. These parks had street lamps and plenty of benches, the trees were evergreens and never lost their leaves. Sometimes Toki liked to think the trees were his walls.

The trees in the forests around his ancestral home were white birch trees that lost their leaves when it got especially cold. The trees there looked like hollowed out corpses, they were nothing like the carefully tended trees in Oslo's parks.

Oslo was a big city compared to what Toki had known in his small village. The youth had never been allowed to venture into the nearby city of Lillehammer, his father said that it was a city of debauchery and would only taint him further and lead Toki astray. Oslo was huge, it had a huge section where tall skyscrapers stared coldly down at the little people on the streets, but also hosted comely little streets with foggy windows and cobbled streets.

Toki knew better than to try the homeless shelters. For a couple of weeks he had stayed at various ones off and on but had been mugged and harassed more than half the time. The last time he had tried to stay at one he had been accosted by a younger group of men who thought in vain that Toki had anything of value. When it was obvious he had no money, the bullies attempted to steal Toki's one possession…

" _Jeg ber deg!_ __ _This is all I have, please!" Toki held his beat up electric guitar to his chest._

" _Jaevel,_ _ **bastard,**_ _you probably stole it anyway! Give it over!" A disheveled man with knots in his tangled beard gave a hard boot to Toki's stomach, but the teenager kept his arms tight across the guitar._

 _Through the aching in his abdomen Toki tried to get a clear view of his assailants, but snow had begun to fall heavily, and far off he heard a whistle blowing._

 _One more boot to the side of his skull knocked him back, unconscious, his arms still holding the instrument to his chest._

Toki hadn't awoken till the next morning, he found himself in a small cell with smelly drunks surrounding him. Turns out a police officer had seen the fight and scared off Toki's assailants and out of pity (at least Toki hoped at the time) had scooped up the unconscious teenager and placed him in the holding pen overnight.

As the morning progressed though, the teenager realized that there was no friendliness in the police man. He hadn't necessarily brought Toki in out of the goodness of his heart as much as he needed to fill a quota for the evening. In pain and hungry, Toki was let out onto the cold streets just like the rest of the drunks in the pen. He was thankful the police man didn't think he was under aged, if he had realized how young Toki was he might've tried sending him back to his parents.

Toki couldn't bare the idea of going back.

This particular morning, Toki had been forced to sleep in the park. He had curled up beneath a small stone bridge, he had been lucky and found a large cardboard box to take shelter in. He used his guitar case as a hard pillow. It was early, right before sunrise.

Toki gingerly poked his head outside of his cardboard shelter. This particular morning Toki's panic attack had grown out of control. Usually he would busy himself with his guitar when he felt an onslaught of panic, but the morning was just too cold to have bear fingers on the equally icy strings.

His mind would run in circles, waves of nausea and cold sweats assaulting his already weakened body.

So he laid there, frozen physically and mentally to the cold ground. Fighting the urge to scream. He had had a nightmare where his father had found him and dragged him all the way back to the punishment hole.

His father never _really_ spoke to him in these dreams, he just mumbled bible verses rapidly under his breath.

Toki would plead with his father, trying to persuade him to let him go.

" _Jeg lover!_ _ **I promise!**_ _I'll never run away again, I'll be quiet, I'll do what I'm told! Plez, father!"_

It always ended the same, Toki would be thrown down into the hole, and his father would stare at him with icy lifeless blue eyes. Then an eclipse would take out the sun, and Toki would be bathed in velvet darkness. The sound…of something scraping…towards him…

It sounded like bones on stone…

That's when Toki would wake up, the dreadful sound from his dreams never seemed to reach him, but he felt every night that it was getting closer.

 _There has to be a way out…_ , Toki though desperately of a way out of the attack and his life in general. He knew that if he stayed much longer in Oslo the chances of his father finding him were likely. Toki also knew that with winter setting in, he would probably freeze or starve to death on the street. Somehow he had to get out of Norway.

Toki had never left his village till now, let alone the country. The idea of leaving Norway had filled him with panic. _I don't even know another language, if my life is so hard now, I can't imagine how hard it would be somewhere else._

Toki had one thing on his side though, his guitar. The teenager had gotten pretty good at playing the instrument. Sometimes he would even get lucky and play outside coffee houses or bars and receive tips, even with the lack of an amp people could see and hear his talent.

Toki's father never allowed music in the house. Not even gospel songs. Once, Toki had acquired a flute, it was just a children's toy really, wooden and mass produced. But Toki had loved blowing into the mouthpiece, hearing the shrill sound come out the little finger holes. He had known better than to show his parents what he could play, knowing full well that they would take the flute away and probably destroy it. Toki hid the flute in the forest, inside of an old dead birch wood.

Frowning at the memory, Toki thought of his forgotten flute back home. Waiting silently inside of that tree never to be played again. He felt guilty somehow, like he had betrayed a friend.

 _Maybe if I keeps playing outside that one bar, the owner will let me play inside?_ Toki ran through possible scenarios in his head, luckily the brainstorming was calming him down, allowing him to momentarily forget the numbness in his extremities.

In the end, Toki decided he had nothing left to lose. There was a bar close to the park he often slept at that had always allowed him to play outside of it, Toki had met one of the bartenders there and had gotten to know him somewhat.

When Toki approached the musty hole in the wall bar, he was happy to see that same bartender lazily cleaning a pint glass. Taking a moment to pat down his messy brunette hair, Toki entered the bar.

The bartender looked up slowly, giving Toki a friendly smile. The man was older, probably Toki's father's age, but whereas Reverend Wartooth's face was tight and cold, the bartender's face was fat and jolly.

"Toki! Haven't seen you in a while, come in!"

"Hallo, Mr. Larson!" Toki beamed, he was worried that maybe all this time he had forgotten him.

"Sit down, I have some hot _glogg_ if you'd have some."

Mr. Larson could have been anyone's potbellied red nosed grandpa. Without waiting for Toki's reply, he fetched a chipped mug from above the bar and disappeared behind the back to fetch the glogg. Toki had never had glogg, but knew it was hot and mulled and that was all he could hope for.

Mr. Larson emerged from the back room with a steaming mug, his white mustache tickled his chin as he grinned. "It's an old family recipe, please…"

"Oh wowie! Takk!" Toki was more than thankful, he blushed, humbled by the man's kindness. Toki sat down at the bar and wrapped his hands around the steaming cup. The steam felt amazing on his dry cold fingers and for a moment, Toki felt like a normal kid.

"Don't mention it, no one else has tried my glogg today!" Mr. Larson huffed and scowled out toward the snow covered street. "Economy goes caput-but you would think the drunks would still drink! Ha!" The large man slapped his stomach and pulled up a small stool.

"Mr. Larson, maybe I could help you!" Toki piped, "I could play my guitar and maybe you could get some customers! I'd do it for free! I can also help around the bar…" Toki began to get desperate, if he couldn't sell Mr. Larson on his idea he might freeze into a Tokisickle any night now. "I'm really good at doing chores!"

Mr. Larson listened with his everlasting smile, he raised his bushy eyebrows at Toki.

"You're running from something aren't you, boy? It's not just the snow and cold driving ya' inside…I'll tell ya' what, you tell me what you're so afraid of and you're hired…as long as you work as hard as you say." Mr. Larson eyed the mug of glogg expectantly.

Toki took a small sip of the hot mulled wine. It made him warm all over. Mr. Larson gestured for him to drink more. Toki obeyed, lightly blowing on his beverage before taking a hearty gulp.

"That's it, nothing like something strong and hot." Mr. Larson pat Toki enthusiastically on the shoulder.

Toki smiled weakly, he had learned that telling people you were a run-away usually ended in them taking advantage of you or trying to convince him to go to the police so they could call his parents.

If Toki was forced back home…no not a home, back to that _hell_ he wasn't sure he'd ever have the chance to run away again.

"What I'm afraid of…"Toki trailed off, feeling his father's presence suddenly, so real that he looked around the bar suddenly, as if to make sure they weren't hiding in the shadows. "Well, I can't go back home…"

"Yes, yes, that's obvious little Toki." Mr. Larson said softly, his gaze empathetic. "What did they do to you?"

Toki had never told anyone what his parents were like. Back in his small village the locals knew his parents were very pious, and that Reverend Wartooth used to preside over a large parish before Toki was born. He also always got the feeling the townsfolks knew something that he didn't know.

No one would talk to him, even the children ignored him. When Toki asked his mother one night when she seemed especially content (although this was hard to tell) why none of the other children would play with him he earned himself his first whipping. Toki had been barely five.

It hadn't been the first time his parents had corrected him, but it was the first time they used that ghastly leather whip. Toki cried, still naïve enough to think his mother had any maternal instincts.

After the beating, Anya whispered, "De Underjordiske, Gud bevare sin sjel!"(1) Making her hands in the sign of the cross.

Toki was called back from his memory by Mr. Larson pouring him more glogg. "It's okay, that's what the glogg is for."

Toki nodded thankfully before downing half the mug. He knew he was getting drunk, he knew he might be sick later but he was also happy to feel warm for the first time in months.

"I would do lots of chores for my parents, mainly sweeping the snow…stacking wood for the fire. You know, things you have to do…but I messed up a lot so they would punish me…but then I started playing the guitar and listening to music and…" Toki stared into his mug, he felt guilty speaking ill of his parents, even though he knew it was deserved.

"They are looking for you?" Mr. Larson asked.

Toki flinched. "I don't know…but if they find me…I'll be in so much trouble!" Toki's eyesight blurred with stinging tears, the panic from earlier threatening to overwhelm him. "Please, Mr. Larson! Don't send me to the police! They'll just send me back!" Toki grabbed ahold of Mr. Larson's arm, tears cascading down his chafed cheeks.

"Calm down, Toki, calm down! No one is calling the police, and your parents are not here. They are far away, ja?"

"I hope so…Takk, Mr. Larson…"

"Well, you told me the truth of it, reckon I could use help around this old place, and maybe some music would be good for business too. Now I can't offer you much, I have a spare office in the back if ya' would like to make it your bedroom of sorts, I can feed ya' and put up your rent for a while until you figure out what you want to do, little Toki." Mr. Larson grinned wide. "I am so happy you came back after so long. I was worried about you." The large man blushed somewhat. "You remind me of my son, he liked that rock n' roll too."

Toki could barely contain himself, he jumped out of his stool and leaned over the bar to hug the red faced older man. "Thank you, thank you, Mr. Larson! You won't regret this, I promise!"

The friendly bartender chuckled and hugged the small youth back.

"You are very welcome, now, let's toast!"

A/N: Sorry if this was slow, I don't intend on giving another chapter to sloshy jolly ol' Mr. Larson, just kinda' felt like Toki needed a helping hand. Otherwise, how did he get to Florida? Not sure where this is going, maybe slash later on...Not with the old dude though, not an OC either. Or I might leave it as a one-shot…

"The one's living underground. God save his soul." English translation.


End file.
